The Prints of Wu Hao

Dates: March 17 - July 14

Venue: Gallery 102

WU Hao was born in Nanjing in 1932. After crossing the strait to settle in Taiwan, he served in the army and learned painting under LI Chun-Sheng’s instruction when off duty. In 1956, he co-founded the Dong Fang Art Association with other artists; altogether they are addressed as the Eight Pioneers. In addition, he is a founding member of the Modern Printmaking Society and takes up the position as chairman of LI Chun-sheng Modern Painting Foundation. He is a recipient of various awards for honorary accomplishments, such as Duke Award in British International Print Biennial, Gold Seal Award, Taiwan Society of Printmaking, and Gold Noble Award, Art Society of China. In recent years, along with the persistently constant artistic creation, he has established the LI Chun-sheng Modern Painting Foundation Award so as to contribute to nurturing young talents of arts.

WU Hao is renowned for his printmaking and oil painting. His oil paintings contain the interest of prints while the grains and texture of oil painting are revealed through his prints. He acquires knowledge concerning modern painting under the tutelage of LI Chun-sheng, and inspirationally absorbs the essences derived from Dunhuang grottoes, new year pictures and embroidery. He highlights the important configuration of lines through delineation of Chinese painting techniques such as ink and wash, fine brushwork and outline drawing. As a result, he successfully initiates his own distinctive artistic style. In his artwork, the oriental spirits and colors are the focal point and converged with the singular formation and composition of folkloric arts. With the multiple layers of saturated color hues by way of color processing, the unique esthetics of oriental folklore is fully represented in his depiction with themes, whether characters, landscapes, houses, animals, or flowers are all breathed into life with vigor; likewise, the lines simultaneously convey a sense of plainness, delight, simplicity, childlike joy as well as a sophisticated charm. The printmaker is highly recognized and acclaimed in the art scene for his explicitly bold, unstrained and overwhelmingly exhaustive strokes which are suggestive of a subtle power of delicacy and grace.

WU Hao’s artwork with themes mainly adopted from life experiences is imbued with profound nostalgia for homeland. Through dialogues with his hometown in the artwork, he transforms certain elements into his artistic creation, such as dazzling colors within a picture while flower planting and gardening in his childhood and the bucolic kaleidoscopic tints with boisterous festive totems. Against the contrast backdrop of cornucopian, unrestrained composition, the flowing lines converge and result in a distinct style with strongly individual formation and language of arts. WU Hao has his artistic career lasted over sixty years. This exhibition presents a complete collection of his prints created over the years. Apart from the highly popular representatives such as Old House among the Reeds and Twelve Musicians, there are a lot of magnificent prints that are first displayed to the public; meanwhile, the artwork comprises and well reflects the quintessence of the artist’s lifelong art. At this exhibition, it is expected to witness the purified immaculate beauty conveyed through WU Hao’s artistic creation after all the vicissitude experienced in his life, as well as the sublimated lofty full self at one with nature after transcending the earthly prosperity.

Chou Ying An Ode to Printmaking: A Retrospective

Dates: March 17 - July 14

Venue: Gallery 104

CHOU Ying (1922-2011) was widely acclaimed and highly honored for his accomplishments in printmaking. His works were selected and applauded by many important international exhibitions such as the S?o Paulo Art Biennial Exhibition, Brazil and the Graphic Art Biennial Exhibition, Korea. He devoted his time and efforts to various art activities to help promote printmaking. In 1970, he co-founded the Taiwan Society of Printmaking with some printmakers. In addition, he dedicated himself to teaching art and educating young artists. For forty years, he had taught at National Taipei Teachers College (now the National Taipei University of Education), where he nurtured numerous celebrated artists, such as HSIAO Chin, HO Chao-Chu, HO Cheng-Kuang, LEE Shi-chi, NI Chao-long, LIANG Yi-Fen, and LIN Pao-Yao. Undeniably, CHOU Ying is one of the most influential figures in the art circles of Taiwan.

Most of CHOU’s early woodcut prints centered on country and farming folks. Prints made in this phase typically depicted in a realistic manner the psychological aspects of human beings and different situations in human life. The refined and flowing lines, woven into a realistic picture of country life by his artistic hand, brought out and highlighted the literary nature of his prints. A deep sense of nostalgia saturated every piece of his work. Amid the anti-Communist climate of the 1950s, CHOUhad published in newspapers and magazines some prints that reflected the spirit of the time and that served as political propaganda. Apart from woodcut blocks, he kept on experimenting with different mediums of printmaking such as cane-fiber boards, paper and lithographic limestone. In his late years, he continued his exploration of the art world and ventured further into the field of multi-medium arts, seeking to innovate new printmaking techniques.

The Ode to Stone series was the fruit of his efforts, in which he revealed the innate structure of stone in an abstract way. By adopting techniques of frottage, he used rubbing instead of carving to create prints. Successfully capturing the subtle variances of stone textures in light and shadow with these unique techniques, he breathed new life into the cold and lifeless natural object and made it radiate light and warmth. Under his hand, the dynamic rhythm of stone textures brings out the vigor and vitality of the seemingly lifeless object. His brilliant performances won himself twice the CCA Chairman’s Award, International Biennial Print Exhibition R.O.C. Up to now, the Ode to Stone series has been widely lauded by the printmaking circles ever since its first appearance. This exhibition highlights this series and exhibits at the same time CHOU's masterpieces from different periods. Held in honor of CHOU Ying the distinguished artist and educator, the exhibition aims to show the world his ceaseless efforts and full devotion to art by presenting his works as a whole.

Dates: March 17 - July 14

Venue: Gallery 103

Born in 1938, SHAIH Lifa graduated from the Department of Arts, Provincial Normal College (now National Taiwan Normal University). He travelled to Paris in 1964 to study sculpture, and subsequently departed for New York in 1968 to study the theories and history of art. He is one of the best post-war artists in Taiwan. He is an active member of the Fifth Month Art Group. In addition, he played a crucial role in the birth of some important arts and cultural organization such as Paris Foundation of Art, Taiwanese Literature Association and Taiwan Cultural Exchange Center. In addition to artistic creation, he has been working at organizing exhibitions and writing art criticism. It should be added that for years he has devoted himself to compiling historical documents on the history of art movement in Taiwan. He has published several books on art, among which History of Taiwanese Art Movement during Japanese Occupation is one of the most renowned. He takes a firm stand on Taiwanese cultural identity when writing the art history of Taiwan. His contribution to the literary and art circles in Taiwan is beyond dispute.

SHAIH is a versatile and impressively productive artist, who is steeped in various fields of art such as printmaking, oil painting, sculpture and installations. His versatility testifies to his ceaseless efforts and exploration of the art world. Adroitly and freely he channels his dynamic creative energy into his artworks, sometimes with admirable restraint and sometimes with carefree abandon. His creative philosophy manifests itself in his artworks, which show the world his ideas about aesthetic ideal and artistic creation. His works have been selected by several important international exhibitions, such asthe International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo. In addition, his prints are collected by the Prints and Photo Department of the National Library of France (Bibliothèque national de France), MoMA, and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.

SHAIH’s prints were in the main created in the decade of his youth, a decade renowned as “Ten Years of Printmaking,” starting from his school days in Paris in 1964 to his apprenticeship in Westbeth Artists’ Housing in 1974. In terms of style and themes, prints made during this period can be roughly classified under five categories: the religious themes, Baby and Incubator, War and Peace, Pure Form, and Life in New York. These prints not only signify the transformation of SHAIH’s ideas about life at a different stage but also reveal his reaction to art trends. In these works, SHAIH deconstructs and remolds the mundane values of this world and presents different creative tensions flowing from the conflict between ideas and practices. This exhibition puts on display the linocuts and zincographs that SHAIH created during his overseas sojourn in Paris and New York. By presenting SHAIH’s ten-year printmaking journey, this exhibition aims to give the viewers a glimpse of his earlythinking and ideas about art.

Courtesy of the artists and Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, for further information please visit www.kdmofa.tnua.edu.tw.